Solar desalination technology is regarded as a low‐carbon and environment‐friendly technology to address the water crisis. The current challenge is that sunlight irradiates directly the entire water body, resulting in a low photothermal conversion efficiency. Herein, a novel photothermal compound material with dual‐layer structure for solar‐steam‐generation is developed by depositing multi‐walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and carbon black nanoparticles (CB) onto a biomass reed straw (RS) skeleton. With respect to the lower layer of the resultant generator, the porous RS skeleton with open‐cell vessel channels and closed‐cell porous basic tissues can not only supply the water to the upper layer through the capillary force, but also insulate the heat transport. Additionally, the MWCNTs‐CB hybrid photothermal composite on the upper layer with large specific surface and roughness facilitates the evaporation of water by the generated heat from the absorbed solar light. The composite generator possesses an extremely high spectral absorption of ≈99% in wet state, along with a superb evaporation rate of ≈1.45 kg m−2 h−1 and photothermal conversion efficiency of ≈87.58% under one sunlight irradiation. Thus, the deposition of MWCNTs‐CB on a renewable biomass RS skeleton develops an ideal candidate generator that hold a desirable promise for applications in seawater desalination.

seawater. Therefore, desalination has been considered to be one of the most promising technologies to solve the shortage of freshwater resources. [5,6] In recent years, many seawater desalination technologies, such as thermal desalination, [4] reverse osmosis desalination, [4,7] forward osmosis desalination, [8,9] and nanofiltration [10] were developed and used to obtain freshwater. These desalination technologies, however, consume a lot of fuel or electricity and indirectly increase carbon dioxide emissions. In addition, they are costly and not suitable for large-scale use in remote or underdeveloped water-deficient areas. [5,11,12] Therefore, it is urgent to develop a fresh and low cost desalination technology that can be driven by renewable clean energy. [13] Among all the renewable energy sources, solar energy has attracted extensive attention from researchers around the world because it can be applied to various water sources, such as seawater, rivers, and sewage to produce fresh water and is regarded as a feasible alternative to traditional fossil fuels. [11,14] Combining the inexhaustible solar energy with the available large amount of seawater, using the solar seawater desalination to produce low-cost and sustainable freshwater has become one of the effective ways to solve the worldwide problem of lack of fresh water resources. [11,15] However, seawater has a remarkably weak absorption rate of sunlight, resulting in wasting the majority of the energy and a low evaporation efficiency.In recent years, researchers have developed a solar interfacial evaporator, which can effectively improve the evaporation efficiency of solar evaporators compared to the traditional technology that uses solar energy to directly heat a large amount of water. [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31] For example, Dong et al. [32] developed reed leaves inspired silica nanofibrous aerogel interfacial evaporator that achieves an evaporation rate of 1.25 kg m −2 h −1 under 1 Sun. You et al. [33] developed a cellulose aerogel from natural wood to act as a solar interfacial evaporator, which can achieve an evaporation rate of 1.40 kg m −2 h −1 , corresponding to an evaporation efficiency of 83.4% under 1 Sun. Liu et al. [34] developed a carbonized chitosan aerogel interfacial evaporator that achieves an evaporation rate of about 1.76 kg m −2 h −1 and an evaporation efficiency of about 91.0% under 1 Sun.Among solar interfacial evaporators, interfacial evaporators with bilayer structure are one of the typical types. There are two Solar desalination is one of the most promising technologies for alleviating the shortage of fresh water. In recent years, interfacial solar evaporators have attracted much attention due to their higher energy efficiency compared to traditional technologies that directly heat bulk water. However, its development has been hampered by the complex preparation process, high costs, and low evaporation performance. Here, a bilayer biomass solar interfacial evaporator-polypyrrole-sorghum straw (...

Solar interfacial evaporation is an effective way to address water scarcity in the 21st century. However, when the evaporator is exposed to light for a long time, salt would be deposited on its surface, leading to degradation of evaporation performance. Herein, an easily fabricated bilayer interfacial carbon–ZrO2/polydopamine/polyurethane foam (carbon–ZrO2/PDA/PU) evaporator is developed, in which carbonized Zr‐based metal–organic frameworks are used as photothermal layer with a light absorption of about 98% in the range of 200–2500 nm and PDA‐modified PU foam is used as the substrate with well water absorption ability and thermal insulation performance. The evaporation system achieves an evaporation rate of 1.626 kg m−2 h−1 and a photothermal conversion efficiency of 80.8% under 1 sun irradiation. Moreover, no salt deposition is generated and the evaporation rate keeps steady even in 10 wt% brine with prolonged light exposure. Therefore, the evaporator has great potential in solar water desalination and alleviates water shortage problems for less developed regions.

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Electronic skin (e-skin) is a bionic human skin material that is widely used in artificial intelligence devices. Pressure sensors, as the main component of e-skin, can perceive active pressure spatial distribution in real time. However, in addition to perceiving touch and pressure, human skin also has the ability to sense pain after being impacted or heavily pressed. Therefore, it is hoped that e-skin has the ability to sense the occurrence and disappearance of pain. Here, a pressure memory sensor (PM sensor) based on pressure memory foam (PM foam) was fabricated by a simple and easy-to-scale preparation process. PM foam exhibited excellent electrical conductivity due to the dense three-dimensional conductive network formed by carbon nanotubes (CNTs). PM sensors can achieve pressure memory and spontaneous recovery performance due to self-adhesion between the cell walls provided by polyborosiloxane (PBS). We investigated the effects of CNT and PBS contents on PM sensor sensitivity and memory time and realized the adjustment of sensitivity (0.012–0.099 kPa–1) and memory time (54–325 s). The sensor can bionically sense pain under heavy pressure or impact. In addition, PM foam exhibited excellent electromagnetic interference shielding performance and achieved a shielding effectiveness of more than 30 dB. PM foam realized the intelligent regulation of electromagnetic wave reflection and electromagnetic wave absorption through the conversion of a foam state and solid state. PM foam had excellent Joule heating performance to resist extreme cold environments. Multifunctional pressure memory and pain bionic sensors have great significance and application prospects in e-skin.